


You've Seen The Butcher

by engagemachine



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:35:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29530662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engagemachine/pseuds/engagemachine
Summary: We're not friends.I mean, nottechnically.
Relationships: Joker/Original Character(s)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 22





	You've Seen The Butcher

Parchment paper crinkles obnoxiously under my ass when I hop onto the exam table. Swing my legs. I hate doctor’s offices. Always have, ever since my mom dragged me kicking and screaming into the pediatrician’s office at four years old to get the MMR vaccine.

The way everything is always so outdated and pale, always smelling faintly of old sweat and whatever chemical disinfectant they’d used to wipe down the counters. The chairs. Surely they could afford a renovation. These places must make bank, right?

I stare at a large tear in the threadbare carpet, where it looks like someone had dragged a chair or something heavy across the floor. The carpet’s blue-gray, and the countertops are the color of sand, like they’d wanted to simulate a beach or something; the washed out artwork on the walls—peach-colored seashells nestled in the sand, set in a cheap, shiny chrome frame—confirm my theory.

I swing my legs again, puff out my cheeks and release a slow breath. I’ve been waiting for over twenty minutes. It never gets easier—the waiting. You’d think I’d be used to it by now with as often as I come here, but I’m not. Anxiety prickles up the back of my neck like it always does, erupts over my arms in a wave of gooseflesh. I scratch at my elbow. Stare at the clock.

I cock my head a little as I glance at the Grey’s Anatomy poster that outlines the cardiovascular system. A stringy-looking skeleton, made up of red and blue. Arteries and veins. There’s a cutaway to show how the blood pumps through the pulmonary capillaries, and the path it takes as it pulses through the aorta. I’ve seen a hundred of these posters in a hundred different doctor’s offices, and they always look the same.

My cellphone buzzes in my messenger bag, where I’d left it on the chair in the corner. I don’t have to check to know that it’s Dad. He always calls on appointment days, and I never have the heart to answer—at least not until after, when I’m in the safety of my apartment and can finally breathe, suck in a deep lungful of air. I’m never sure if it’s relief I feel or dread. Postponing death is fun for like, the first year. Then it just feels like I’m playing chess with God as I wait to relapse, like, one wrong move, and he’ll smite me where I stand.

Then again, I stopped believing in God a long time ago.

Dr. Kapur is not unfriendly, just succinct. I like her. She tells it like it is, doesn’t sugarcoat shit. Doesn’t bullshit me. Kinda wish I had had her in the beginning, when I was first diagnosed, but at least I have her now. The bone marrow aspiration and biopsy came back clean, she says. Blood work looks good, too. I feel myself inhaling, the rise of my chest, my ribcage drawing up tight, and then the fall of it as all that air is released, the air whooshing out of my lungs—but I can’t hear it. Dr. Kapur’s lips are moving, and I know she’s saying, _see you in one month_ , but I can’t hear that, either.

Sometimes I wonder if she’d even notice if I stopped showing up. Would she just think that I’d switched doctors? Maybe she’d assume I’d kicked the bucket—and would she care enough to want to even check?

I slip off the exam table and pull my jacket back on. Hoist the strap of my messenger bag onto my shoulder.

I guess it doesn’t matter either way. Very little matters when you feel like a dead man walking. I’ve been in remission for almost two and half years now—but somehow death still feels as if it’s waiting for me just around the corner, like this wraith that’s always got its eyes on me, watching. Waiting.

You always read these little brochures and cancer packets that are like, _embrace positivity. Live each day as if it were your last. Shine bright_ , or whatever.

Kinda hard to do when you feel like your own body has betrayed you, when you feel like you’ve been left on Death’s doorstep to rot, only, Death had decided it didn’t want you right then, but it would, maybe in six months, or five years—but it didn’t have the courtesy to tell you when. You just had to live each day as if it were your last.

Who the fuck _does_ that?

Nancy tells me it’s my bitterness that’s going to kill me—maybe she’s right.

I take the subway home, climb the stairs to my apartment, on the third floor. I pass Robbie Gutiérrez in the hallway, and I inhale when I do. He always wears the good cologne, that woodsy, pine-rich musk that I like—and he flicks his eyes up to meet mine at the very last second as he passes. Just the barest hint of a nod, and no exchange of pleasantries. I’m not even sure if he can speak English. I used to buy pot from him—like, a handful of times, maybe two or three—before I realized I was doing it more out of a sense of rebellion rather than because I actually enjoyed it—because I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t like not feeling in control, the anxiety that always tethered itself to my insides whenever my brain sensed that it wasn’t in prime operating condition. I didn’t like feeling all blissed out and loosey-goosey. If I’d wanted to get stupid, I’d have sprung for the white wine I kept near the stove for cooking. Cheaper, too, to do it that way.

I have to shove my shoulder against the door to get it open. Then I fight to get my key out of the deadbolt. I’ve asked the landlord a hundred times to fix it, but sometimes I feel like he’s waiting for me to kick the bucket, too, that way he won’t have to worry about someone harassing him about it anymore. Hopefully whoever the next tenet is doesn’t mind living in a shithole.

Maybe it’s not that bad. Not really. It’s pretty big, actually, an open floor plan—like in _Friends_ , kinda, only my place isn’t nearly as artsy and colorful as Monica’s. It’s not even as cool and bachelor pad-esque as Joey and Chandler’s.

But I’ve got a kitchen, with a little round table and four chairs. Creaky wood floors, a gas stove and running water. A living room with wide windows, those old glass panes that get freezing in the winter. I remember the ad for the place had boasted ‘AMAZING CITY VIEWS!’—unfortunately, what they’d meant by that was the straight shot down Lincoln Street of the little Japanese restaurant on the corner, in all its neon glory, flashing ‘OPEN’ at all hours of the night—but I’m not complaining. Best chicken yakitori around.

There’s a pawn shop and a laundromat, and a halfway house just down the street, too, which is why I’d gone through the trouble of installing a couple of extra locks on the door. Kinda made me feel like an asshole since I’d never been robbed, but one of my neighbors—Mrs. Fridel—had said that was the thing to do.

 _Those folks up there_ —she meant the Wesley Center, that’s what it was called— _you can’t trust ‘em, honey. Rob you blind before you even know what hit you. They get to relapsing and ain’t nothing going to stand in the way of their next fix. You do yourself a favor and you get yourself some extra locks now. Don’t be stupid._

I did what she said, mostly because I was new to the city back then and this was my very first apartment—and now I have to fight to get my key out of the stupid deadbolt at the top every single time.

There’s a little ledge slash shelf that separates the entryway from the kitchen (just like in _Friends_ , remember?) and I toss my keys into the wooden bowl there as I shrug one arm out of my jacket, then the other after I’ve lay my messenger bag on the kitchen table. I drape my jacket over the spine of the chair. Purse my lips.

Nancy was here, and it’s not hard to tell. The place is sparkling. All my dishes stacked neatly on the microfiber towel next to the sink. The counters wiped down, everything organized and in its place. The cupboards closed, and the floor swept—I can tell because the little moon-sliver of onion I’d dropped on the floor the night before and hadn’t bothered to pick up was now gone.

In the living room, the magazines on my coffee table are all carefully stacked, and the fuzzy blanket I liked to snuggle with on the couch is folded over the back of it. She’d watered the potted plant I keep in the windowsill, cushioned on a small stack of books. Somehow, she managed to keep bringing that thing back to life even though it seemed determine to die under my care. I have to marvel at it. Nancy always leaves my house looking like it belongs in an ad for HGTV, and I have to marvel at that, too.

I call my dad and give him the news while I wait for the water for my pasta to boil. With my hip cocked against the counter next to the stove, I stare into the bottom of the pot and watch the little bubbles appear while I cradle the phone between my cheek and shoulder, my arms crossed over my abdomen.

“That’s good news, honey. I’m glad to hear it.”

He says that every time, but I know he really means it—not like Mom.

The silence stretches kind of awkwardly between us for a few more beats. _I should probably add the pasta,_ I think—but it always feels so rude to say goodbye after barely saying more than a handful of words.

“So… how’s mom?”

I don’t know why I ask. It just kind of feels like I should.

“Oh, she’s… the same.” I can hear the breath he lets out when he says it, like it’s an effort to force the words out, like it’s exhausting having to say it. Like we both already know the answer to my question.

“Yeah....” I say, stupidly, because what else is there to say?

Dad tells me about the hurricane that ripped through Brownfield over the weekend, a neighboring county that butts up against my little Missouri hometown. Five deaths. Lots of devastation. He tells me some of the local churches are getting together to collect donations, pass out some canned goods and maybe house some of the folks who lost their homes. I pour my pasta in. Give it a little stir. I listen.

Life back home always sounds so much simpler—but somehow harder, too. I think about the people I grew up with, the people who’ve never left my hometown, never even stepped foot outside state lines, people who only know one church, one highway, one moon, one God. The kind of people not enticed by the grandeur of the world at large, the thrill of exploration, or seeing a new place for the first time. Crazy to think that, at one time, I was one of those people, too.

I listen until my pasta turns fat and tender and yellow, and then I say I have to go.

“Okay, sweetheart,” he says, almost a little sadly, I think. “Call you soon.”

We don’t say I love you, not anymore. But I guess this is enough.

I sit on the couch with my bowl of pasta. I avoid the news. I watch some shitty sitcom with Kevin James. And then I fall asleep on the couch.

Nancy tells me sometimes that I should get a cat, that it would be nice for me to have something to curl up with a night, something to take care of—but we both know the only reason that little plant on my windowsill is still alive is because of her. It’s not like I would forget to feed it, if I had a cat, but having attachments at this stage in my life is just… complicated—and not in that Facebook-status kind of way. Like, it _hurts_ to imagine myself growing attached to a little fuzzball of a thing, cradle it, take care of it, take it to the vet, _love_ it—knowing that I will eventually have to leave it—knowing that it will most likely outlive me. And then what? Who will take care of it? Who will love it and care for it the way I had? And won’t it miss me? Won’t that break its little heart?

Mostly, I think, I don’t deserve to have a cat. I don’t deserve a sweet, soft little thing.

I always kill the things that I love.

It’s a little past midnight when I hear it.

The thump in my bedroom.

I shift on the couch, where I’m lying on my side, and pull my blanket up towards my chin. The TV’s off, and it’s raining outside, where I can hear it pattering against the windows. _It’s gotta be those raccoons again,_ I think, my eyes still closed. They’re always getting into the trash on nights like this, desperate to seek shelter from the rain.

I catch a flash of lightening, bright enough to pierce through the veil of my closed lids, and my eyes flutter a little, waiting for the accompanying boom of thunder, but it never comes. Storm must be far off, then. 

My eyes drift all the way shut again, and this time the thump is a little louder, making my eyes shoot open in the dark. Okay, definitely not a raccoon that time, not unless it’s a raccoon that weighs almost two-hundred pounds. A terrifying thought, to be sure, but still not quite as terrifying as the very real and very frightening alternative:

Someone’s broken in.

I lie curled up in my dark green plush blanket, still wearing my jeans and my blouse from yesterday, and I listen, wide-eyed and terrified, as I lie in the dark.

There’s a thud as something seems to slam shut—the window, maybe?—and then for a moment everything is quiet.

Okay, so, maybe they left, maybe they took one look at my bedroom and thought—

—Another thud, this one even louder, like someone’s just body-slammed the wall.

_What the fuck?_

Every single one of my nerves is lit up and on edge. I don’t know what to do. When I first moved to the city, I used to play-act scenarios in my head, like, what I might do if I ever woke up to somebody in my apartment, but none of those scenarios seem particularly helpful at present. I keep a baseball bat next to my bed for that very reason, since I used to play in high school, and I’ve got a pretty good swing—but it’s not like I can get to it now.

I listen for a few more agonizing moments, trying to control my breathing, trying to keep still. I can’t just lie here and not do anything. How stupid would I be if I just pulled the covers up over my head and waited for whoever it was to jam a pillow down over my head until I stopped breathing?—Or worse.

They could have a gun.

I release a slow, measured exhale as I carefully untangle myself from the blanket, set my feet on the floor.

The small, yellow light above the stove is still on. I hold my breath for a few more seconds—as if waiting for the figure to emerge from down the hall, where the bathroom and the bedroom is—but nobody comes. I look around for something to arm myself with, and aside from the floor lamp next to the couch, I have nothing. Too risky to try to sneak past the hallway and get into the kitchen, where I could grab a knife—but would I even use it? The thought sickens me, makes my gut clench in fear. I feel like you’d _like_ to think that, in a moment of life or death, you’d be able to defend yourself, sink a blade inside another person’s flesh—but could you really? Even if it was in self-defense?

I’m ramrod straight as I slowly get to my feet, every muscle pulled taut, my spine rigid, ready for attack.

The front door’s not far, and I know I could reach it—but it’s the locks I’d have to contend with that worries me. Two deadbolts, plus the little lock in the handle, and finally the metal chain. I’m not obsessive or anything, I only installed the one extra deadbolt, and that’s it—but you can never be too careful in a place like Gotham.

It’s too bad I didn’t consider that when I’d neglected to make sure my window above the fire escape was locked. Jesus Christ, I might as well have been _asking_ to be robbed.

I sit out there, sometimes, on that metal fire escape, when I’m feeling overwhelmed and I need to get some fresh air but don’t feel like being around other people. Sometimes I leave the window cracked at night if my apartment feels too stuffy. Sometimes I close it but forget to lock it.

I’m such an idiot.

My eyes remain trained on the hallway, and for a long time I just stand there, too afraid to move. I keep my ears perked for sound, for movement.

It’s silent—even the city seems quieter than usual, the rain muffling the usual nightscape sounds I’ve come to depend on to help lull me to sleep. The longer the silence stretches on, the more I start to convince myself that maybe I’d imagined the noises. Maybe it was just my neighbors downstairs thumping around? They did have kids, after all, maybe they were messing around, tossing a ball against the ceiling or something… at half past midnight.

However unlikely that last scenario seems, it feels like years that I stand there, waiting for signs of movement. Surely if someone had broken in, they would have revealed themselves by now?

I find myself creeping towards the hallway before I can stop myself—my bare feet following a familiar pathway, knowing just where to step to avoid the creaky floorboards. I convince myself I had imagined the sounds. There’s nothing here. Anyone with half a brain would know there’s nothing in an apartment like this worth stealing. I try to think of the most expensive thing I own—my laptop, maybe—but it’s so far from new it’s almost laughable, you could maybe get one-hundred bucks out of it. I don’t even think the pawn shop down the street would deem it worth that much.

I stop just as I’m about to round the corner that leads to the short hallway. My bathroom’s just to the immediate left, and my bedroom next to that. There’s a tiny towel closet at the very end of the hallway, and then an extra bedroom slash office off to the right.

 _Everything’s fine_ , I think. _You’re just being paranoid._

I steel myself, and I round the corner, stepping into the dark hallway, where my shadow is all too eager to hide behind me—coward.

My hand trembles over the light switch for just a second, and I flick it on.

Nothing.

My shoulders relax, and I allow myself to heave a relived sigh.

I pad down the hallway as I will my body to try and relax, poking my head into my bedroom and flicking on the light just to be sure. I check the closet, and behind the door. Nothing. Room’s just as I left it—and the window above the fire escape is locked, too.

I check the guest bedroom—which is really more of a storage space, since I don’t have a bed in there, and I have no need for an office—even though the door still remains shut, just like it always is.

I let myself relax a little a little further, annoyed that I let myself get all worked up over nothing.

I go back to my bedroom. Change into a pair of gray sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt while I’m in my room, and then I head back to the kitchen. I’ll check the locks on the door one more time and then turn out the light above the stove. Kinda weird that I passed out on the couch like that. Must have been more stressed from my doctor’s appointment than I had originally thought.

I leave my bedroom, tugging on the sleeve of my oversized t-shirt where it had flipped up over my shoulder after I’d thrown my hair into a messy bun—and then I look up. Stop dead in my tracks.

_Holy fucking shit._

My heart shudders to an abrupt halt, and it’s like the air is sucked straight out of my lungs, like I’ve been gut-punched.

“Hello there.”

His voice—nasal and weirdly pitched, almost like a violin out of tune—slithers down my spine in a way that makes the hairs on my arms instantly stand at attention. I feel like my organs have just dropped out of my body.

I stare at him, and stare at him, and he just stands there, only half-lit by the light from my bedroom that bleeds out from behind me.

He’s _massive_.

Taller than I would have imagined. Big, broad shoulders—even when they’re hunched at the angle they are now, even with his head cocked to the side. It looks unnatural. _Wrong_.

I stare at him—hardly even daring to breathe—but my eyes dart briefly down, just for a second, just long enough to catch where a dark patch is blooming on his lower abdomen, just above his left hip.

“You’re bleeding,” I whisper.

It’s a stupid thing to say, I know it is—but the words fly out of my mouth before I can stop them, like they’ve got wings. My eyes dart up to meet his, and I can’t even see his irises. Feels like I’m staring straight into a dark hole, into an abyss.

“What an _astute_ observation.”

My spine bristles at his sarcasm, but then a second later my heart is jolting straight into my throat when he takes a menacing step closer, his head still cocked at that unnatural angle. He seems to assess me for a moment, looking me over—up, and down, and then back up again—and then he stares at he me from beneath his brows. For some reason, I can’t bring myself to look away. Looking at him is like standing in the middle of a street, staring at the car that’s careening towards you at breakneck speed—yet for some reason, you can’t will yourself to move, paralyzed where you stand—can only watch and wait for the inevitable collision.

I realize I’ve backed myself into the doorframe to the bathroom, and I startle when it collides with my back, my eyes widening. It dawns on me then: I didn’t check the bathroom. I never checked the fucking bathroom.

He seems to smile at my sudden understanding, amused, almost, like he knows exactly what I’m thinking. He takes another lumbering step closer, towering over me, so close I can smell him— _taste_ him—gasoline and smoke bleeding all over my tongue, filling up my nostrils, making my eyes burn.

He stares at me, and I stare at him, and when he takes my chin in his gloved hand—so gentle—tilting my head back, _all_ the way back, baring the pale column of my throat to him, I don’t stop him. I can’t.

I flex my fingers at my sides, huffing through my nose, trying not to cry. I watch the way his heavy gaze slides over my exposed throat, and I think about how easy it’d be for him to kill me—slit me open, from one carotid to the other, let my body crumble to the floor, let me bleed out, let Death _finally_ take me; maybe this is what Death had intended all along?

I stare up at him from over the slope of my nose, searching his eyes. My neck is arched back at an angle that’s painful, and when his head moves towards mine, my body jolts on instinct, desperate to get away, only, his fingers tighten around my jaw, holding me very still. I gasp, and the leather of his gloves squeak as he readjusts his grip, his fingers clamping down on my jawbone in a way that makes it feel like it’s going to crack under the pressure. _Jesus_. I really am going to die.

He leans in close, my eyes widening, and his greasy hair brushes my cheek when he fits his mouth near the shell of my ear. I draw my shoulders up to my ears out of protective instinct, but I can hear the wet sounds of his mouth, feel the rush of his hot breath against my ear when he finally speaks. His voice is a low rumble that seems to vibrate throughout my entire body.

"You got a first aid kit?"

**Author's Note:**

> This story was original published on FFnet way back in 2010, under the title 'Hero'. However, as I am now starting over from scratch and have decided to rewrite the whole thing, I will be uploading the new chapters here, where the project has been retitled. 
> 
> If you feel so inclined and are interested in seeing this continued, please let me know, and thank you so much for reading.


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